Bright Young Things

The two bright young things of Edgar's latest novel (Countess, Duchess live, work and love in London during the late 1920s. Helen Redmaine, whose dashing, titled father was killed in the war, leaves her loving, impecunious family to work in the art department of an advertising firm. There she meets Lillian ""Boots'' Skinner, high-spirited, beautiful and perhaps overly wise in the ways of the postwar city. While Helen falls in love with the director of the art department, Boots trains her sights on the head of the agency. Both of these men are married, posing problems of different sorts for each woman. Helen finds happiness by trusting her heart, while Boots, with encouragement from Helen's film-crazy brother Duncan, takes a chance that her talent may run more than skin deep. Edgar brings the different worlds of England's social classes to life in this engaging romance, her bright and believable characters as full of feeling, wit and possibility as were the times in which they lived. (October 20)